Controls on Odor and Noise Urged for Trash Stations

By DIANE CARDWELL

Published: April 12, 2004

The dense clustering of waste processing operations in several neighborhoods outside Manhattan does not cause major environmental damage to the surrounding communities, a long-expected study of commercial waste disposal has concluded. At the same time, the study, to be released today, recommends stricter controls on pollution, noise and odors, which city sanitation officials say they have begun to pursue.

The report on commercial garbage comes as the city's trash policy, one of the thorniest challenges for generations of public officials, is again in flux. The Bloomberg administration is considering new ideas for managing residential waste while it puts together a 20-year plan to manage the city's garbage.

Mandated in 2000 by a local law, the commercial study is one of the first comprehensive attempts, sanitation officials said, to catalog precisely how and where commercial waste is produced, transported and processed. Such nonresidential refuse makes up the bulk of the city's waste stream and is handled by private companies, rather than by the Sanitation Department.

The study, which was prepared for the city by a consultant, Henningson, Durham & Richardson, examined 39 of the city's 62 private transfer stations. It focused on four areas with some of the highest concentrations of stations, including Hunts Point in the Bronx, Williamsburg and Greenpoint in Brooklyn, and Jamaica, Queens.

Residents of those areas -- often industrial zones interspersed with low-income communities -- have complained that since the Fresh Kills landfill on Staten Island began shutting down operations in the late 1990's, their neighborhoods have been unfairly burdened, as commercial trash stations began to also accept residential garbage. Almost all of the city's residential garbage is currently processed at private transfer stations.

In Williamsburg and Greenpoint, for instance, there are 16 waste transfer stations processing about one-third of the city's trash, including smelly organic waste and rubble from construction and demolition sites. Residents of those areas, where asthma rates are among the highest in the city, complain of ubiquitous truck traffic, noise, odors and rat infestations brought about by the sheer volume of trash moving through their streets. They have been lobbying for some of the stations to be closed.

''All of us woke up one morning and we were surrounded by garbage, and then these garbage dumps gave birth to these big trucks going down our streets,'' Sal Cantelmi, a longtime Williamsburg resident, said at a recent organizing meeting of an anti-transfer station group. ''Greenpoint-Williamsburg are the dumping grounds for the city and nobody knows we're here.''

But the study, which assumed that if the waste stations were not active in those locations, other industrial operations would be, concluded that the ''geographical proximity'' of the transfer stations does ''not cause adverse combined or cumulative'' environmental effects. ''There are no findings,'' a summary of the report reads, ''that would warrant a reduction in the number and capacity of transfer stations in the study area.''

Nonetheless, said one environmental advocate, the fact that the study recommends operational changes is itself a tacit admission that things are not as they should be. He spoke anonymously because he had not yet read the report, though he had been briefed on it,

Although the study found that garbage trucks do not contribute unacceptable levels of pollutants to the air, it did find that the diesel engines used in sorting, moving or crushing construction debris contribute anywhere from about 1 percent to about 6 percent of potentially damaging small particles in the air.

As a result, sanitation officials said that they planned to train inspectors to recognize visible emissions from those engines, which may be old and therefore not up to the latest environmental standards, and issue violations.

The study also recommended that those stations handling decomposing organic waste upgrade their odor control systems to neutralize, rather than mask, them. Sanitation officials said that they plan to issue new regulations requiring those types of controls.

Sanitation officials said that based on the study's findings, they planned to require that stations working with building materials ensure that truck wheels are cleaned before leaving the stations, to avoid tracking mud throughout neighborhood streets. The officials also said they would require automatic misting systems to keep dust levels down during processing.

The study also found that trucks lining up at and near the stations were the biggest noise factor, and recommended focusing on design requirements for the stations to keep idling trucks off the streets, which sanitation officials said they would consider.

Though the report is likely to bring little solace to residents who say they want fewer stations and less garbage near their homes, Bloomberg administration officials have expressed sympathy for those concerns. Their original plan to rebuild eight city-owned transfer stations -- most of them now dormant -- to export the nearly 13,000 tons of daily residential trash by water or rail would more evenly distribute processing operations around the city, advocates for neighborhoods near the stations s say.

But now, that plan seems too expensive and time-consuming to be an immediate solution. Administration officials are looking for other ideas, while some of the private companies are pursuing proposals to outfit new or existing transfer stations for barge or rail access.

''We understand that the transfer stations do impact communities and we want to lessen their burden,'' said Jordan Barowitz, a spokesman for Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg.

Precisely how the administration plans to do that is unclear. The study found that the existing city-owned transfer stations, if rebuilt to handle residential waste, could potentially also take on a sizable chunk of smelly commercial garbage, some 9,800 tons a day.

Last week, Mr. Bloomberg told reporters, ''The fundamental concept is that everybody is going to have to be somewhat responsible for the solid waste that's generated in their borough or in their neighborhood,'' but stopped short of assuring perfect parity among areas of the city.

Manhattan, for example, has no private transfer stations, and the study found obstacles to installing transfer stations in that borough, because the four locations considered there were too small or too close to parks.

All of which may leave residents near the transfer stations measuring their lives in so many truck trips and nights of broken rest. Delia Lopez, for example, says that she is frequently awakened around 5 a.m. by the stench wafting up to her Williamsburg apartment from idling trucks.

And Carlotta Giglio, who watches hundreds of trucks pass her home on Metropolitan Avenue in Williamsburg each day, said she no longer sits outside or even invites friends over because she is embarrassed by the noise and the filth.

''It smells like they're transporting dead bodies that are lying out in the heat for a month,'' she said. ''I can't explain that odor any better than that. It's disgusting.''

Photo: A waste transfer station in the Greenpoint section of Brooklyn, one of several New York neighborhoods with a concentration of such plants. (Photo by Stephanie Keith for The New York Times)